Torn From the Front Page: Hit the ground running, Gov.-elect Snyder, and congratulations

On the second day after his landslide election win over Democrat Virg Bernero on Tuesday, we have a question for Republican Gov.-elect Rick Snyder.

What have your done for Michigan lately — since your election?

Wednesday was Day One of Job One, which is putting Michigan back to work.

Its corollary is making Michigan work.

After all of the image-building, all of the politicking, all of the millions in campaign money spent by who-knows-who, the real work of the next administration in Lansing should have already begun.

Hit the ground running, Gov.-elect Snyder.

You’ll need the head start for Inauguration Day in January, when all eyes in Michigan will be upon you, to see what you’ll do — what you’ve already done — and not just what you’ll say.

Assemble the team of your administration now and plot your strategy.

Because Michigan can’t wait for your work to begin early next year.

Voters in polls this past election season overwhelmingly said their No. 1 concern is jobs.

After a decade of declining employment, Michigan hit rock-bottom in 2009, losing 230,000 jobs in that year alone. Since the turn of the century, we’re down almost a million jobs. The loss continued through this year, although at a slower rate, but at 13 percent unemployment, we still follow only Nevada for the highest jobless rate in the nation.

There’s now far less money in the Great Lakes State from far fewer paychecks, fewer businesses whose doors remain open paying less taxes on smaller profits.

As you said in your campaign, government can’t create jobs, but it can make a better climate for creating jobs.

Let’s do that right away. Get that 6 percent flat corporate income tax replacement you touted for the Michigan Business Tax in the legislative pipeline now. It’s not too soon to round up legislator-sponsors to see it through the House and Senate.

Which brings us to Job Two: Fixing the broken way our government in Lansing and municipal governments across the state do business.

The opposition to whatever you propose in any endeavor is already building walls to box in you and your ideas.

It’s a game of partisanship that has hamstrung Lansing for years. End it, as you promised. Do it before the new year begins.

Michigan will need all hands on deck, with everybody pulling together, to enact the massive changes needed to put our state back on course, and toward prosperity.

That will take bipartisan cooperation and compromise, qualities that have run through Lansing as a tiny trickle in recent years, if at all.

It was largely ceremonial, as the political landscape of Lansing will change dramatically on Jan. 1 after term-limited lawmakers leave Lansing in droves, with dozens and dozens of newcomers replacing them.

The 500-pound gorilla in the room, of course, is the budget deficit that Snyder faces for the next fiscal year that could be as high as $1.6 billion — without any extra federal money this time helping to pay the bills.